Skills & Duties for Being a Playwright
Playwrights from William Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams and Zora Neale Hurston have captivated literary and theater audiences with a timeless understanding of the skills and duties needed to become an acclaimed playwright. Each playwright's ability to create memorable characters and dramatic dialogue as well as construct vivid visual worlds is testament to the hard work that a good playwright must endure to become one of the best.
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Three-Act Structure
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A playwright must create a story that adheres to the basic principles of play construction. In other words, a playwright can label the divisions of his play 'acts' or 'scenes', but he or she must create a story that adheres to the three-act structure. A three-act structure simply means a play that is constructed with a beginning, middle and end. It is the playwright's duty to create a story arc that has sufficient dramatic or comedic value to deliver an exposition, a complication and a resolution.
Dramatic Form
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A playwright must create a script that is written in dramatic, not narrative form. Writing in narrative form reveals an action or event that has occurred in the past. Writing in dramatic form reveals an action or event that is occurring in the present. The California State University website provides an effective example of writing in dramatic form in an essay titled, Tips for Playwrights: Dramatic Versus Narrative, "A drunk at a bar, doesn't say a word, takes a bottle and sends it smashing into the wall"
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Dialogue
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The written word is the most important element in a play. For this reason, a playwright must know how to properly format dialogue. According to Playwriting101, "Dialogue is always mixed case, single-spaced, runs margin to margin and follows the character name on the next line." Leave a blank line between each character's dialogue. A correctly formatted play shows the mark of a professional playwright.
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References
- Photo Credit manuscript image by PaulPaladin from Fotolia.com
